


i'll fall and i'll fall and i'll fall

by ishie



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd been running. She remembered that much. [post-A Feast For Crows]</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll fall and i'll fall and i'll fall

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "Sansa kills Gregor. Sandor doesn't know what to do with himself"
> 
> Would love any feedback, as always! Especially since I'm not sure how that prompt birthed this whatever it is. Title from Laura Marling's Alpha Shallows which I'm having permanently implanted in my brain.

Smoke swirled upward into the winter sky, thick enough to blot out the full moon. The first of the new year, the wolf's moon. Cold and white as the snow, swollen and heavy with promise. Alayne stroked the curve of her fur-covered tummy with a hand stained in blood. Was it her blood? Or Father's? Why couldn't she remember? Oh, it couldn't be poor Sweetrobin's, could it?

When she closed her eyes she saw his pale face lax, his thin arms limp at his sides and dark bruises shadowing his ribs, and felt a fierce stab of something like relief.

She'd been running. She remembered that much. It had been dark and warm when the first horn ripped her from a restless sleep. She had dressed quickly, pulling on whatever she could lay hands on in the dark. Wrapped the furs from her bed around her shoulders and let herself out into the corridor. From there her memory was a ruin. Nothing but her own panicked heartbeat pounding in her ears until she found herself here, at the bottom of the slope upward to Stone. And beyond, to Snow and Sky, to the Eyrie perched high above like a watchful bird.

"—bird, little bird," she whispered. "Fly away, fly, fly." The furs were rough and sticky under her hands.

Surely it couldn't be Harry's blood? Not Harry, with his soft looks and bruising fingers. She couldn't _remember_. Wasn't that silly, to not remember whatever had painted her skin the dark red-brown of death, even as it dried and flaked in the creases of her palms and under the half-moons of her fingernails?

At her feet, the Mountain That Fell crumbled into ash inside his battered armor. Gouts of viscous black cruor—old blood, dead blood—sizzled on the pitted plate. Molten enamel and ice-melt pooled below, hissing and spitting like sausages as thick as a fat man's fingers. But the stink that rose with the smoke was that of a foul, festering rot. Dry as dust, it caught in her nose and throat with every breath.

It made Alayne's mouth water nonetheless. Her tummy gave a queer turn under her hand.

From somewhere below, the sweet sound of horns skirled on the air like wolves baying at the moon. The urge to join in grabbed her with a fist wrapped around her jaw, filling it with lead, cracking her mouth open wide enough to let her cries escape. The crisp snow was cold under her knees but the flames still licking inside the armor tickled at her. Her skin felt stretched beyond repair, too hot and too thin all at once, as though she would come bursting through at any moment, from belly and breast and throat. Just another fat little sausage splitting from the heat.

A long, low howl rose over the sound of the wind and the horns, high above the clangor from the Gates of the Moon. Alayne swallowed her own thin answering cry before the wind could snatch it away. She clawed at the snow around her, trying to push herself up.

Her legs were as cold and brittle as the ice that had crackled under the bulk of the Mountain That Burned when she pushed the burning brand into the crack in his gorget. The flames leapt up inside his greathelm, flickering through the slits as it consumed padding and flesh and bone. When his head whipped back she saw the grey, ragged flesh bubbling from the heat, streaked with black where the rot had set in.

His armored hands scrabbled at the broken gorget and banged against the steel of his helm but to no avail. In seconds the flames had spread to engulf him, red-gold sparks dancing from every joint of his enameled plate as his legs buckled. Alayne had scrambled out of the way as he toppled sideways. He crashed to the ground with a sound like the sheets of ice and snow that slumped to the valley floor from high atop the Giant's Lance.

She didn't know how long she had huddled there, but when she gained her feet, they were as dead as stone. She stamped them up and down but it was useless. Only the barest sensation rippled up her legs. Where her toes should have been was a numbness, almost a warmth, where her flesh suddenly rounded and sank into nothing. One foot moved in front of the other but it was like watching them through someone else's eyes, someone else's body moving where she told it to go. One foot in front of the other, snow folding around the ankles with every shuffling step. Only yards away, the grey-green sentinels stood watch, their limbs bent low before her. Tall pines swayed in the piercing wind. Thick clusters of needles—like upraised fingers—beckoned her onward. _One more step, one more, one more to where he waits._

Behind her, something snapped. The Mountain That Withered shifted with scream of metal and ice. The fire roared and reared, snapping at her heels like a pack of dogs.

She tripped over something buried in the snow. Putting out her hands to stop her fall, Alayne bit through her bottom lip as she hit the ground. Pain flashed through her hip and rippled across her belly, as if to mimic the sharp cramps that roiled within it. New blood, sharp and salty, flooded her mouth and froze on her chin. The snow piled high around her like a feather bed, brushing icy softness across the exposed skin of her face and neck and sinking sharp needles deep into the furs wrapped around her.

She gave in to it and closed her eyes, just for a moment. _Just long enough to catch my breath._

"I'll just rest a moment," she promised, nestling her cheek into the downy softness. A soft grey warmth swept in and settled at her back, radiating heat like a brazier. A contented sigh slipped from her lips as the waves of pain slowly receded. This was good enough. He was close enough, surely, she could rest here. Just for a little while.

But rest wasn't to come. The howl came again. Louder. Closer. It shuddered through her, from head to toe, and rang in her head like a blow from a gauntleted fist. A banked ember shook loose in her chest and dropped down through her belly to land in the cradle of her hips where it spread like jade wildfire, consuming everything in its path until nothing remained but the pain.

She pressed icy fingertips to her lips, remembering a night etched in gold and green. But that night hadn't been hers, Alayne thought. It _couldn't_ have been. It was a dream, a nonsensical fantasy born to a bastard girl raised gently by soft-handed septas.

With a guttural cry, Alayne pushed herself to her hands and knees. The furs dragged in the snow as she crawled, her swollen belly scraping through the white powder as she struggled to stay upright. Her hair tumbled down out of the last of its pins. Catching in the wind it unfurled in ribbons and tangled around her arms like a living creature. In the light from the fire, it burned a deep auburn.

The howl rose again, nearer than ever, echoing off the walls below and shrieking through the trees. She knew it as if it were her own, a bellow of anguish and rage that brought stinging tears to her eyes.

"Here!" she tried to call out. "Help me, please, I'm here!" But the wind tore the words from her as quickly as she formed them. Her fingers were cramped with the cold, so red and chapped that they looked burned. The blood dried under her nails had all but disappeared, swallowed up by the cold and the snow. Whoever had spilled it on her hands must be buried in the ice, she thought, like she would be. Forgotten little lumps of marbled flesh waiting at the foot of the Lance for spring. Always waiting, forever waiting, until someone remembered, until someone sang her song and raised them into the light again.

 _remember remember_ , a voice whispered in her head.

Something shifted low inside her, under the pain. The wind roared to match the fire that still danced inside the Mountain That Crumbled. She tipped back her head and strained to see the moon high overhead. It gleamed behind the smoke, like a silvery coin spinning through the air to fall forgotten at a woman's feet. Alayne shook the hair from her eyes and reared back on her haunches like an animal—

 _like a lady, a wolf, remember the wolf, remember_ , the voice screamed inside her head.

Pain twisted through her belly. It pulled on every fiber of her being, ripped straight through her until she knew that if she turned her gaze down again, she would see her innards spilling forward onto the snow, gray and steaming. Like the man on Aegon's High Hill, his eyes and mouth wide open as he clutched at the snakes slithering from his body as the Hound turned, his great shining sword falling down and down and down.

 _Sansa!_ the voice snarled, _remember the dog, your dog, remember, remember, remember_

"Help me," she whimpered. Her hands were claws against the hard mound of her belly as the snakes twisted and bit inside. "I've _been_ good. I waited! They didn't see me, I swear. I wouldn't let them! They never knew!"

"That's my good girl," someone said, in a howling voice like the scrape of ice on stone. Hands closed over hers, burning against her icy skin, crushing her bones to dust in their grip. She turned her nails outward, sinking them into callused skin that she knew almost as well as her own.

—and Sansa howled. 


End file.
